Evangelos Venizelos

Former conservative prime minister Costas Karamanlis, Labour Minister Effie Achtsioglou and former socialist deputy premier Evangelos Venizelos were among the politicians who were accidentally appointed by a section of the Supreme Court as court representatives in the upcoming local, regional and European elections, due to a mix-up in the lists provided by the country's Bar Associations.

Political tensions over the alleged scandal involving Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis peaked on Thursday when ruling SYRIZA accused opposition New Democracy and the centrist Movement for Change (KINAL) of seeking to cover up ostensible offenses by politicians aligned with them. 

The cases against most of the politicians implicated in the alleged Novartis bribery scandal will be shelved next week due to a lack of evidence, according to judicial sources on Tuesday.

The Novartis affair, which was once described by the government as the biggest scandal since the establishment of the Greek state, appears to be fizzling out as the judiciary closed the investigation due to lack of evidence for four politicians and sent only the case of former health minister Andreas Loverdos (Pasok) to parliament with a request that his parliamentary immunity be lifted so that

The standoff between the leftist SYRIZA party and the governor of the Bank of Greece dates back to the very day that Yannis Stournaras was appointed finance minister under the coalition government of New Democracy's Antonis Samaras and PASOK's Evangelos Venizelos, on July 5, 2012.

Greece's main opposition party, which is polled to win the next general election, has doused speculation that it plans to propose former socialist prime minister Costas Simitis or ex PASOK chief Evangelos Venizelos as President of Greece.

Speaking on Skai radio on Thursday, New Democracy spokesperson Maria Spyraki said both scenarios were "out of the question."
 

The next government will need to make very cautious moves if it wants to alter the terms of last Friday's Eurogroup agreement toward fiscal relaxation, an E-Kyklos event on the political consequences of the agreement heard on Thursday.

New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis and former socialist Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos have  rejected  "Republic of Ilinden Macedonia" as a candidate name for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) as irredentist. 

Athens and Skopje are reportedly discussing "Republic of Ilinden Macedonia" as a candidate name for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) as part of the solution to the decades-old dispute.

The proposal was reportedly put forward during talks in Sofia on Friday between the prime ministers of the two countries, Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev.

The Greek Parliament will decide on Friday whether or not to request the prosecution of 10 prominent politicians named in a bribery scandal involving the Swiss drugs manufacturer Novartis, in the final phase of a parliamentary inquiry into the case.